At the Crossroads of Arts and Science
A Review of The Footnote: A Curious History by Anthony Grafton
Reviewed by Laurent Cases
Monographs or articles of academic value contain some method of citation; it is natural for scholars to expect that any scholarly work should contain a way to assess a given statement, as well as assess its reliability. Students of pre-modern history are well aware that such methods as footnotes or endnotes are fairly recent. After all, the ancients did not use footnotes or endnotes. Herodotus, instead of citing his sources, would use the word φὰσιν to indicate divergent storylines in sources. This practice endured well into the byzantine period, as the historian Zonaras, when discussing the fate of the Palmyrene empress Zenobia, also citing the two main narratives, would also use that same word marker found in Herodotus (Zon 607). At the other end of the spectrum, historians began to collect documents and data in order that they might sustain a point. Eusebius of Caesarea is a case already mentioned in Grafton’s work. Optatus of Milevis, in Against the Donatists, attached to his manuscript a flurry of documents with the aim of demonstrating the validity of his position.
Yet, even as a student of this particular historical tradition, footnotes are in fact second nature when crafting a discourse about the time period, even if their purpose has remained largely unsought, their true nature unidentified. In Grafton’s own words, “most students of historiography, for their part, have interested themselves in the explicit professions of their subjects, rather than their technical practices, especially those that were tacitly, rather than explicitly transmitted and employed” (p.26). Still, footnotes have become an integral part of the tools of the historian, and their use, hence, is a vision of a certain kind of history. Grafton’s work traces the development of the footnote as a mirror of larger historical trends, and changes in the mentalités of scholars and authors alike.
Chapter one of Grafton’s work introduces the conundrum that he seeks to resolve. The historian, Grafton states, has two major tasks: to examine all of the sources relevant to a certain historical problem, and to create an original narrative from these sources. Footnotes, Grafton states, are the proof that both tasks have been carried out (p.4-5). Grafton extrapolates on the implications of this statement. First, footnotes are the marks of appurtenance to a professional fellowship. By writing footnotes, Grafton states, the apprentice stakes a claim at being a historian, and perhaps most important, at being a member of a group by engaging in a discussion with the members of that group (p.7-17). The inherent problem is that, though the young historian enthusiastically displays this membership, as the historian ages, the footnote becomes a hindrance: it breaks the narrative, and affects the accessibility of the text. That is, the writing of a historical narrative becomes a science rather than an art form.
Chapters two and three evaluate this hypothesis, that footnotes evolved (out of simple glossings on manuscripts) from the marriage between history (the art of narrative) with philology (the science of source criticism). At the center of this marriage, scholars have argued, is the figure of Ranke. Ranke, Grafton argues, had become obsessed with the recreation of the past, “as it was” after the cruel realization that the Louis IX and Charles of Burgundy of Walter Scott had not existed. Grafton does point out that footnotes had existed prior to Ranke: Gibbon (in chapter 1) and Gucciardini both acted as predecessors to Ranke with respect to the use of footnotes. However, as Grafton demonstrates, Ranke used his footnotes differently, that is, while Gucciardini used sources rather heavily to cite any and all sources, Ranke refined this model by viewing footnotes as the quotation and citation of proper sources. Chapter three is concerned with the establishment of this marriage between philology and history. Though a historian, Ranke’s fame had been in his criticism of Gucciardini, and specifically, Ranke’s demonstration that Gucciardini had invented certain speeches in his history (Chapter 2). Grafton shows further that the combination of philology and history changed the nature of history: “history should tell the double story of the historical past and the historian’s research” (p.67). Not only did Ranke reject that notion of history, but philology, as a method, had been around since the Renaissance. Then, the footnote did not originate with Ranke and the German academics of the nineteenth century.
The link established between footnote and scientific history holds, however, as Grafton demonstrates in chapter four, as he examines the attitudes of eighteenth century philosophes. Voltaire, on the one hand disliked foonotes as exhibition of pedantic knowledge that got in the way of the historical narrative, while Tissot on the other hand, viewed footnotes as a natural apparatus of historical research. Tissot’s point is exemplified further in the anecdote of a debate between Gibbon and Davis, as Davis argued that Gibbon’s footnotes were used as a clever artifice to avoid detection. The underlying point is that, by the time Gibbon was writing, academic historical works necessitated the use of footnotes.
Chapters five and six explore different ways in which footnotes predated the enlightenment. Again following that footnotes stem out of the philological tradition, Grafton focused on De Thou, the legal historian, who was instrumental in propagating the use of first-hand accounts as the best source for an event. These sources were largely quoted in footnotes. Most interestingly, Grafton uses the folios of Ben Johnson’s Sejanus, heavily annotated undoubtedly as a shield against potential repression in a tense political climate, to show essentially that footnotes were used in lieu of collection of sources. Chapter six looks to antiquarianism and antiquarian attitudes as the earliest archetypes of footnotes. Indeed, the desire to annotate texts to give them credence can be found in the Greek historical tradition of the fourth century B.C.E, and in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Greek historians and Jewish lawyers used heavy text collection as support for a wide range of problematic issues; for instance, the demonstration that Biblical codes predated Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey. The antiquarians, Grafton demonstrates, had a profound effect on the development of footnotes, in that “their [antiquaries] methodical criticism prodived the model for he analytical, though not the narrative, procedures that Robertson and Möser used” (p.187). However, antiquaries did not annotate: the sources were discussed in the text proper. Then, antiquarians might have provided the impetus for analytical history and have created an intellectual model for the footnote, but they clearly did not “invent” the footnote.
Chapter seven is the culmination of Grafton’s reasoning. In this chapter, he believes that he has identified the archetypal footnote, both in form and in spirit, of the modern footnote: Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary. Perhaps forced by necessity to hide important data in his footnotes to avoid repression from censure, Bayle undoubtedly believed in full and appropriate citations. Grafton’s aforementioned quote about the duality of the historian that Ranke rejected is fully formed for Bayle who saw himself as a narrator and commentator (p.200). Bayle’s commentary arose from the criticism of Descartes, who had elevated mathematical knowledge and method as the pinnacle of truth. Footnoting arose out of Bayle’s belief that historical knowledge was more accurate and applicable than mathematical truth. The final step in the evolution of the footnote came with Jean Le Clerc, who crafted the footnote in its modern form: clear, concise and accessible. Then, according to Grafton, one can find the origins of the footnote in the Republic of Letters, in the reaction against Descartes and mathematical truth, and in the definition of history as a scientific endeavor.
Grafton’s masterful study has taken the form of the dialogue between history, and the art of historical writing, and the science of source criticism. Indeed, though the book purports to delve into the history of the footnote, Grafton instead takes his readers on a journey into the ways in which historians have conceptualized their craft. Why Grafton chose the footnote as his focal point is made clear in the first chapter. Indeed, the footnote is the way in which one expresses appurtenance to a certain intellectual group. It is the mark of the historian’s craft.
Grafton’s methodology is set forth in his preface when he states that “the footnote is not so uniform and reliable as some historians believe. Nor is it the pretentious authoritarian device that other historians reject.” This dichotomy in attitude between science (sentence 1) and the art (sentence 2) is at the core of the footnote. From Ranke’s rejection of the footnote as an ugly alteration of what is otherwise an art form (chatper 2) to Bayle’s extolling of the footnote as a necessary tool, Grafton’s book offers countless examples of scholars torn between the scientific approach to their craft (via source criticism) and the art of crafting a historical narrative. Gibbon’s footnotes are characterized as truthful and accurate but inaccessible, while Möser filled his pages with an extreme amount of footnotes, so as to make his discourse barely legible. Grafton’s clear and precise examples bring the wrenching conflict between the artist and the scientist in all historians to life.
Grafton’s book also exemplifies his belief that a history should show both the narrative and the historical inquiry. Indeed, Grafton begins with the end: Ranke and the evolution of the historical method in the German universities during the nineteenth century (a topic developed more fully in his other work Worlds Made by Words), and breaks down the ideology of Ranke and Niebuhr to its core components. Moving backwards, he then identifies the various influences of Ranke and Niebuhr: Voltaire’s remarks against the pedantic footnotes, the scientific dismantling of the Donation of Constantine by Valla, or the grand literary narratives of Gucciardini and Bruni. Grafton then states that these are but the components that lay behind the idea of the footnote, but that they do not explain the footnote itself (nor do they answer the deeper question on the nature of the Historian’s craft). He finally reaches the first formulation of the idea of the footnote in the response of the liberal arts (via Bayle and Le Clerc) to methodical science (Descartes).
Grafton’s method, traced along the lines of inquiry and discourse, is at the core of what is perhaps my only critique of this book. Grafton’s own training as an early modern Western historian comes to light in this work. Indeed, Grafton does not account for the Greek historical tradition. In chapter five, Grafton jumps from Herodotus to Eusebius of Caesarea, forgetting in the process to address the important historian Thucydides with any depth. Grafton reproduces the bias of Ranke and Le Clerc that the ancients did not have footnotes. This is in theory correct, but the Greeks’ use of the word φὰσιν as a means to distinguish between multiple accounts deserved to be investigated in this context. Lastly, Grafton forgets two important ancient historians: Tacitus and Ammianus Marcellinus. Both of these historians deserve attention as writers of grand narratives to be sure, but also as expositors of some historical truth.[1] While there are no footnotes in classical histories, the process of inquiry and the exposition of truth by sorting out sources deserved a greater place in the narrative, rather than what felt like a footnote in Le Clerc’s
[1]
Ammianus, for instance, made abundant use of primary eyewitness accounts, like
imperial reports and possibly merchants. Guy Sabbah, La méthode d’Ammien
(Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), esp. the second part.
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